Editorial: Hispanic-Americans make mark in Western Massachusetts

National Hispanic Heritage Month is being celebrated through Oct. 15. The month is meant to commemorate the contributions to the United States of Americans who trace their roots to Spain, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

The Library of Congress and a number of other institutions including the Smithsonian and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. have created an Internet site, http://hispanicheritagemonth.gov/about/, which pays tribute to the contributions of Hispanic Americans and is a portal to other related sites.

There is a photograph on the site of Cuban-born Desi Arnaz whose portrayal of bandleader-husband Ricky Ricardo opposite Lucille Ball on the smash-hit sitcom “I Love Lucy,” helped gain mainstream acceptance for Hispanic Americans in the 1950s.

There is also one of Sonia Sotomayor, the Yale University-educated lawyer who was raised by Puerto Rican-born parents in New York City’s public housing and who recently became the first Hispanic justice on the United States Supreme Court.

Representing the field of medicine is the Spanish-born Dr. Severo Ochoa, one of the winners of the 1959 Nobel Prize in the Physiology of Medicine for his work on how the metabolic process in the body makes energy from carbohydrates and fatty acids.

Their cultural and other contributions of Hispanics are all around us from the music we listen to, to the food we eat, to the way our feet move - Zumba, anyone?

In the Newspaper in Education pages in this paper, Jose Tosado, the first Hispanic American to become a Springfield City Councilor, and Springfield School principal Jose H. Irizarry have both written about their Puerto Rican heritage.

National Hispanic Heritage Month is a good time to take say thank you for the continued contributions of such Hispanic Americans in all fields.